


Numb

by watcherofworlds



Series: Whumptober 2019 [29]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Episode: s03e02 Sara, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Prompt Fill, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 02:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21236288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watcherofworlds/pseuds/watcherofworlds
Summary: Prompt fill for Whumptober Day 29 "Numb"





	Numb

Oliver knew he was supposed to  _ feel _ . He knew he that he should feel  _ something _ right now, but in the wake of his crushing grief, he was empty. Numb. A dead man walking, hollow, a body without a soul.

He knew he should be doing something. Laurel was desperate to find the person who had killed her sister, and he knew he should be helping her, wanted to be helping her, because Sara was one of their own, but right now he couldn’t make himself move or act or even think. The only thing he could manage to do was sit as still as a statue in his chair in the Foundry, staring blankly at the table where Sara’s body had been lying just hours before.

He’d long since lost track of time when he heard footsteps that he recognized as John’s a moment before the person in question appeared in his peripheral vision.

“I’m gonna catch whoever killed her,” he made himself say, because holding that thought in his mind was the only way he knew how to make himself keep going and not collapse into the black hole that had opened up inside of him.

“I know you will,” John replied. “And until you do, I’m back on the team.” Oliver turned his head to look at him, surprise alighting dimly somewhere beneath the numbness.

“What about your family?” he asked.

“Sara is family, Oliver,” John said. “Just like you, man.” Oliver nodded but didn’t respond, and the silence stretched out, impossibly heavy.

“So now what?” John asked.

“Now I gotta go get Thea,” Oliver replied. He could hear how dull his voice sounded, despite how deeply he felt the necessity of bringing his sister home, how desperately he needed to have her at his side right now. Despair was the only emotion he was capable of feeling at the moment, but even it couldn’t break through the haze he was living in. “It’s long past time she came home.” John nodded and went to leave.

“John,” Oliver said when he was out of his sight, and he heard his footsteps stop. “I don’t want to die down here.”

“So don’t, Oliver,” John replied, and then he was gone. Oliver was left alone in the half light of the Foundry, a list of all the people he had lost running through his mind- his father, Yao Fei, Shado, Tommy, his mother, and now Sara. His grief rose up out of his current numb state at the realization of just how long the list was. He had lost so much, had lost so many people, and had pushed many more others away because he was afraid of losing them too, and every time he lost someone he cared about, it felt like they took a piece of him with them.

_ How much more of myself must I lose? _ he wondered.


End file.
